East Lansing, Michigan
July 26, 2020
July 26, 2020
July 28, 2020
Diversity
7
10.18260/1-2--35764
https://peer.asee.org/35764
536
Lisa Lampe is the Director of Undergraduate Success in the University of Virginia's School of Engineering and Applied Science, joining UVA in January 2014. Prior to that, she served in many roles that bridge student affairs and academic affairs including Student Services Specialist and Residence Dean at Stanford University, and Hall Director and Interim Area Coordinator for residential academic programs at the University of Colorado-Boulder. She is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in Higher Education at the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia.
Blakeley Calhoun is the Assistant Director of Undergraduate Success in the University of Virginia's School of Engineering and Applied Science, joining in July 2018. Blakeley has previously worked in Residence Life as an Assistant Community Director at Michigan State where she also completed her Master of Arts in Student Affairs Administration.
In this descriptive study, we examined engineering student satisfaction with academic advising in our new co-advising model as well as compared to the past faculty-only advising model. We conduct this analysis through a critical lens by examining any differences by a student’s combined sex and ethnicity. In the faculty only advising model, students had separate first-year instructors and faculty advisors. In the co-advising model, students’ first year engineering course instructor also served as their academic advisor. Leveraging in-class discussions, the co-advising model infused several formative topics and activities into the first-year engineering course. These included major selection; identification of peer-support mechanisms; references to available counseling, tutoring and career-planning resources; periodical reminders regarding academic deadlines; check-ins to identify students at academic and/or medical risk; and early interventions for students who experienced academic or other difficulties. Our analysis of an extensive and representative data set (n =1210) of students from academic years 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 revealed 72 percent and 73 percent of students, respectively, agreed or strongly agreed (affirmed) that their advisor took an active role in ensuring their success in engineering, as compared to previous research reporting 31 percent affirmed the same statement in 2013. Our 2016 and 2017 data, unlike the 2013 dataset, allowed us to extract survey responses from underrepresented minoritized students (URMs) in two ways: ethnicity, as categorized by the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), as well as a binary sex variable of male and female. Under the co-advising model, Black or African American males were the highest in affirming their advisor took an active role in ensuring their success in engineering at 86 percent. Comparing co-advising to faculty-only advising model, each group had a higher percentage of affirmation. These metrics, along with other data analysis, suggest adopting elements of a co-advising model may improve the advising experience for URM engineering students.
Lampe, L., & Calhoun, B. (2020, July), Full Paper: First Year Engineering Undergraduate Academic Co-Advising Improvement Paper presented at 2020 First-Year Engineering Experience, East Lansing, Michigan. 10.18260/1-2--35764
ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2020 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015